北海落水者终获救

It was a situation every ferry captain dreads. In the cold blackness of the North Sea, a passenger has fallen overboard, remarkably, the crew of the Princess Seaways managed to turn the vessel around and use their life boat to pull a 23-year-old from the waves, still alive.

As soon as the captain was informed about the incident, he turned the ship round in the right way, so at the end it happened opposite direction of the sailing route and we were able to find the woman very quickly and I believe that from the moment she fell overboard and until she was onboard again, it lasted 34 minutes.

These pictures were taken from a RAF Sea King helicopter sent to airlift woman to hospital.The rescue happened around 20 miles off the Yorkshire coast, as the ferry crossed from New Castle to the Netherlands.

How the woman fell in isn’t known. But she stayed afloat, using a life buoy thrown by a fellow passenger.

The woman, from Hertfordshire, has now been discharged from hospital, following a journey that was rather less than plain sailing.

Mark Smith, Sky News.